His last year was glorious and triumphant beyond example; and his death was most felicitous to himself, being without a Pang, without tasting a reverse, and when his sight and hearing were so nearly extinguished that any prolongation could but have swelled to calamities. (118)

(105) She is thus described in a ballad, made upon the quarrel between George the First and the Prince of Wales, at the christening recorded at p. 83 when the Prince and all his household were ordered to quit St. James’s:-

“But Bellenden we needs must praise,
Who, as down the stairs she jumps,
Sings over the hills and far away,
Despising doleful dumps."-E.

(106) Colonel John Campbell succeeded to the dukedom in 1761:  Mrs. Campbell died in 1736.  She was the mother of the fifth Duke of Argyle and three other sons, and of Lady Caroline, who married, first, the Earl of Aylesbury, and, secondly, Walpole’s bosom friend, Marshal Conway.-E.

(107) “The letter which Walpole alludes to,” says Mr. Croker, “is in existence.  It is not a letter from Mr. Howard to his lady, but from the Archbishop to the Princess; and although his grace urges a compliance with Mr. Howard’s demand of the restoration of his wife, he treats it not as a matter between them, but as an attack on the Princess herself, whom the Archbishop considers as the direct protectress of Mrs. Howard, and the immediate cause of her resistance.  So that in this letter at least there is no ground for imputing to Mrs. Howard any rivalry with the Princess, or to the Princess any malicious jealousy of Mrs. Howard.”  Vol. i. p. xiv.-E.

(108) Mr. Croker asserts, that “neither in Mrs. Howard’s correspondence with the King, nor in the notes of her conversation with the Queen, nor in any of her most confidential papers, has he found a single trace of the feeling which Walpole so confidently imputes.”  Upon this assertion, Sir Walter Scott, in a review of the Suffolk Correspondence, pleasantly remarks,-"We regret that the editor’s researches have not enabled him to state, whether it is true that the restive husband sold his own noisy honour and the possession of his lady for a pension of twelve hundred a-year.  For our own parts, without believing all Walpole’s details, we substantially agree in his opinion, that the King’s friendship was by no means Platonic or refined; but that the Queen and Mrs. Howard, by mutual forbearance, good sense, and decency, contrived to diminish the scandal:  after all, the question has no great interest for the present generation, since scandal is only valued when fresh, and the public have generally enough of that poignant fare, without ripping up the frailties of their grandmothers.”  Sir Walter sums up his notice of the inaccuracies occurring in these Reminiscences, with the following just and considerate reflection:  “When it is recollected that the noble owner of Strawberry Hill was speaking of very remote events, which he reported on hearsay, and that hearsay of old standing, such errors are scarcely to be wondered at, particularly when they are found to correspond with the partialities and prejudices of the narrator.  These, strengthening as we grow older, gradually pervert or at least alter, the accuracy of our recollections, until they assimilate them to our feelings, while,